Haifa Fragments. khulud khamis
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Layla was a plump woman in her late fifties with long black hair splashed with silver. She was almost always smiling and her eyes sparkled when she greeted people. On that morning she was wearing a deep purple housedress with black and red hand-stitched designs. Majid had bought if for her when they went to Jenin years ago to visit friends. That was a lifetime ago. Though Layla still mentioned to her husband every now and again that she’d love to go back, Majid wouldn’t hear of it. It’s not safe these days. End of discussion. And Layla would fall silent, until next time.
Mother and daughter embraced in the doorway. When Layla had inhaled enough of her daughter’s fresh smell, she led her by the hand towards the kitchen, “I just made myself some good kahwa; strong just the way you like it. Lots of sugar too.”
“So, habibti, there must be something that brought you here, you wouldn’t come and visit just like that, with you so busy lately,” Layla poured kahwa into Maisoon’s favourite cup, the cracked one she refused to take with her but didn’t allow her mother to throw away.
“I’m stuck with this design I’ve been working on, and needed to get away from it, so I thought I’d drop by and pick up some of my stuff.”
Layla lifted her cup and inhaled. “Now for the kahwa to come out just right, you have to boil it seven times. Each time it starts rising furiously, you take it off the flames, let it calm down, and then again bring it to a raging boil … seven times, not six, not eight …”
Maisoon giggled as she listened to the words her mother had told her countless times when she was a child.
“And still my kahwa is the best in Haifa,” Layla added with a mischievous smile.
They sat at the kitchen table for a while, Maisoon told Layla about bits of her life, avoiding anything that involved Ziyad, military checkpoints and special permits. “And Baba is still angry with Tayseer? Hasn’t forgiven him yet?”
Sadness snuck into Layla’s eyes, “He will habibti. He’ll forgive him … Right after he forgives himself.” Her face was locked into that same blank expression she wore lately whenever they discussed Majid. Maisoon sensed that her parents were growing apart and that she was partly to blame.
“Now Mais, you go ahead and get the stuff you need. I’m going out to visit Um Talal. You have the house key with you, right?” Layla didn’t wait for an answer, she pushed herself up and headed to her bedroom to change.
Alone in the cool stone house, Maisoon took her kahwa outside to the garden and sat under the grapevine. In her mind, she heard her father’s strong voice drilling into her and Tayseer, you’ll be a doctor. And you, you will become a lawyer, you’ll wear smart suits and I will buy you a leather suitcase. You’ll make me proud. Tayseer would then walk through the garden, his five-year-old face screwed up into seriousness, a plastic briefcase at his side. Maisoon would listen to her father’s breathing with a plastic stethoscope. For them, it was a game. For Majid, they were rehearsing their future roles. Roles they would never enact. Tayseer only had the courage to stand up to their father after Maisoon did. It was Maisoon who put down the stepping stones and, for that, Baba would never forgive her.
She carried her cup inside and rinsed it in the sink. As she walked past the family library she remembered she wanted to grab a book to read. She scanned the new arrivals, resting her eyes on Mahmoud Darwish’s Jidariyya. She scribbled a note to let her father know she’d borrowed it, signing the first letter of her name, the meem—
Maybe her mother went over some of her things and began organizing them, putting things in envelopes. She emptied the contents of the first envelope onto the carpet. Old photographs she had never seen before curled at the edges in despair. Letters, postcards and pieces of paper in different sizes. Is this the history of Majid and Layla’s love? She smiled at the thought. She looked through the photographs, expecting to see her mother and father both posing for the camera. There was definitely her father in the photos. Young, lean, with those piercing eyes and a determination made of rock. A woman’s delicate hand was wrapping his kafiyyah around his shoulders. She studied his young face, her own crooked smile grinning back at her. She could sense that this man was and was not her father. His spirit unbroken, promises of great things to come. Above all, full of playful determination. It was in the way he cocked his head towards the camera.
She turned to the yellowing pages. She could tell by the handwriting that most of them were written in haste, as if the writer were trying to catch that last train to Damascus. She recognized Majid’s handwriting; being left-handed, it had a noble curl to it. Forbidden love letters written to the ravishing Layla? Maisoon felt her heart quicken as she began reading. No love history here either. They were notes about the taste of the brown earth, the scattered stones of a destroyed home, mud on a man’s boots. There was something off in the words, something not quite falling into sync. She started reading again, from the beginning, but this time aloud. And there it was—music. The words were lilting on her tongue like the soft notes of oud. Like the movement of the petals of a flower in a gentle naseem. Poetry tucked into the form of prose. Baba, the bank clerk? A poet? Could it be? The same father who almost disowned his son when he quit law school to enrol in music studies? The same father who was angry about her political activities—himself writing about resistance? She turned the idea from one side of her mind to the other, but it refused to settle like sand grains after a desert storm. She put the photos and the writings back into the envelopes and straight into her bag.
Now, two weeks later, the envelopes sit unopened in her desk drawer—she has been reluctant to stir up her father’s past. Leafing absentmindedly through the book on Palestinian traditional dress, one of the photos catches her eye—there is something familiar about the dress. It reminds her of another dress. Where has she seen it before? In another photograph of a different era. A young woman with long black hair spread like the wings of a bird on her chest. And then it comes to her. Yes, of course, it’s one of the photographs of her father with a young woman. They hold hands and look straight into the camera.
Enough work for today. She closes the book and puts it on top of her sketchbook. Taking the envelopes out of the desk drawer, she spreads their contents on the floor. First, she separates the papers from the photographs. She is intrigued by the prose poetry so she decides to start with that.
The first poem is about land and sumud. Rootedness. Images of the ancient olive tree in an ancient land. Refusal to leave. Resistance. The next few pages she picks up are notes scribbled on napkins—more sumud. There are also allusions to violent resistance. She feels like an intruder. The writer of these words is a complete stranger to her. She struggles to reconcile the fierce, defiant person behind the words with the resigned man of today.
A piece of paper with a single word—